The Usual Suspects? - An honest and amusing discussion on serious matters about programming choices in the (Short) Film Festival Circuit

On a lazy afternoon like many others in Spring 2018, a post heartily penned by one member of their species stormed the usually quite peaceful social media timeline of many film festival programmers:
«I’m very troubled by the role of film festivals in some countries… As a programmer doing this job for around 11 years, I feel very surprised to observe that not only some festivals don’t help that much the development of a different cinematographic approach for the new directors but also they give a strong contribution to destroy the story-telling and the connection with a larger audience. It might end up having festivals with films of the “usua suspects" of the festival circuit, the friends and the friends of the friends, the followers of the sacred word of festival gurus and the copycats of the “this is the cool wave right now"…Well, yes, I’m afraid it will become just a glass bead game of complacency and self-centredness…».
Time has come to tackle the issues raised by those words and the subsequent online discussion that revealed opposing lines of thought on the matter by a varicoloured film festival circuit’s stakeholders mob.
Moderated by Enrico Vannucci (TSFM, Venice Film Festival), the panel features Daniel Ebner (Vienna Shorts), Anne Gaschütz (FILMFEST DRESDEN), Rich Warren (Encounters) and the post’s author Massimiliano Nardulli (TSFM, Less Is More) before turning into a group therapy session with the audience.